“I have been sleeping,” he said in wide cheerful tones as he crossed the room, “all day until now. I am a little stupid; but I have very many things to say you. First I must say you,” he said more gravely and stood arrested with his coat tails in his hands, in front of the chair opposite to hers at a little table, “that your Emerson is most-wonderful.”
Miriam could not believe she had heard the deep-toned emphatic words. She stared stupidly at his unconscious thoughtful brow; for a strange moment feeling her own thoughts and her own outlook behind it. She felt an instant’s pang of disappointment; the fine brow had lost something, seemed familiar, almost homely. But an immense relief was surging through her. “No—Ree—ally, most-wonderful,” he reiterated with almost reproachful emphasis, sitting down with his head eagerly forward between his shoulders, waiting for her response. “Yes, isn’t he?” she said encouragingly and waited in a dream while he sat back and drew little volumes from his pocket, his white eyelids downcast below his frowning brow. Would he qualify his praise? Had he read enough to come upon any of the chills and contradictions? However this might be, Emerson had made upon this scholarly foreigner, groping in him with his scanty outfit of language, an overwhelming impression. Her own lonely overwhelming impression was justified. The eyes came up again, gravely earnest. “No,” he said, “I find it most difficult to express the profound impression this reading have made on me.”
“He isn’t a bit original,” said Miriam surprised by her unpremeditated conclusion, “when you read him you feel as if you were following your own thoughts.”
“That is so; he is not himself philosophe; I would call him rather, poète; a most remarkable quality of English, great dignity and with at the same time a most perfect simplicity.”
“He understands everything; since I have had that book I have not wanted to read anything else … except Maeterlinck,” she murmured in afterthought, “and in a way he is the same.”
“I do not know this writer,” said Mr. Shatov, “and what you say is perhaps not quite good. But in a manner I can have some sympa-thaytic apprysiacion with this remark. I have read yesterday the whole day; on different omnibuses. Ah. It was for me most-wonderful.”
“Well, I always feel, all the time, all day, that if people would only read Emerson they would understand, and not be like they are, and that the only way to make them understand what one means would be reading pieces of Emerson.”
“That is true; why should you not do it?”
“Quotations are feeble; you always regret making them.”
“No; I do not agree,” said Mr. Shatov devoutly smiling, “you are wrong.”
“Oh, but think of the awful people who quote Shakespeare.”
“Ach-ma. People are, in general, silly. But I must tell you you should not cease to read until you shall have read at least some Russian writers. If you possess sensibility for language you shall find that Russian is most-beautiful; it is perhaps the most beautiful European language; it is, indubitably, the most rich.”
“It can’t be richer than English.”
“Certainly, it is richer than English. I shall prove this to you, even with dictionary. You shall find that it occur, over and over, that where in English is one word, in Russian is six or seven different, all synonyms, but all with most delicate individual shades of nuance … the abstractive expression is there, as in all civilised European languages, but there is also in Russian the most immense variety of natural expressions, coming forth from the strong feeling of the Russian nature to all these surrounding influences; each word opens to a whole aperçu in this sort … and what is most significant is, the great richness, in Russia, of the people-language; there is no other people-language similar; there is in no one language so immense a variety of tender diminutives and intimate expressions of all natural things. None is so rich in sound or so marvellously powerfully colourful. … That is Russian. Part of the reason is no doubt to find in the immense paysage; Russia is zo vast; it is inconceivable for any non-Russian. There is also the ethnological explanation, the immense vigour of the people.”
Miriam went forward in a dream. As Mr. Shatov’s voice went on, she forgot everything but the need to struggle to the uttermost against the quiet strange attack upon English; the double line of evidence seemed so convincing and was for the present unanswerable from any part of her small store of knowledge;
